Lifeline: Pearl Harbor's Unknown Hero

Length: 1:26:36

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Narrated by Gary Sinise:

Joe George is probably a name unfamiliar to almost every American, but on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, Joe George was every bit a hero in the opening moments of America’s violent entry into World War II.

George, a rambunctious hard-fighting and hard-drinking sailor on the repair ship USS Vestal, moored alongside the USS Arizona on Battleship Row, ignored orders from a superior officer to cut the lines from his ship to the burning Arizona and instead, on his own initiative, chose to save the lives of 6 USS Arizona crewmen, the last Arizona sailors to get off the battleship alive.

It became a final mission for two of those Arizona survivors he saved that day and their families to make sure Joe George was finally honored for his actions at Pearl Harbor. It would take more than seven decades for George to receive the honor he earned that infamous day in world history, where Joe George became one of America's first heroes of World War II.